Attack of the disgruntled employee: Nation1 vs. Ramsey MacFarlane

What happens when you don’t practice good business policies.

From Motrin Moms to Vermonster, social media is a great way to lash out against perceived wrong doing. This time former Nation1 employee Ramsey MacFarlane has chosen to air his displeasure with his former employer by launching a microsite and using Twitter. 

Nation1 is a music publicity and marketing company that has just expanded into London from Glasgow. The complaint site appeared on March 2nd and has garnered national attention within Scotland, even becoming the #1 trending topic for the country. A newspaper called The Drum has written two stories about the situation and the drama has struck a cord within the advertising and marketing community in the country.

Nation1 owner Andrew Grant responded through a blog post on March 5th. In his response, Grant raises some valid points, but misses the point altogether in other areas. Grant is very impressed at how quickly the microsite gained a following and how quickly Twitter spread the word. He’s right in his views about monitoring conversations, knowing your legal rights as a business and changing your passwords when employees leave if they have access to sensitive information.  

Sadly, he misses the core point of the issue at hand. He fails to propose how to address the complaint via social media. Instead, he uses an example in the post where a person complains that a home builder hasn’t completed his house on time and how Nation1 actively worked to bury the blog so it wouldn’t rank high on Google. He also recommends adding Non-disparagement clauses to employment contracts. These are all methods to silence and condemn open conversation. Not once does Grant suggest addressing the problem and making a change if necessary.

Instead of trying to hide a blog, it would create a more positive position for the home builder if they opened a conversation with the complaining parties and worked to solve their problem. Then when someone searched for their company and saw the blog post, they would see how the problem was rectified rather than just one person’s complaint of terrible service. 

In the case of the Motrin Moms and Vermonster, both Motrin and Monster Energy drinks opened a dialogue with their attackers and became heroes in the social media marketing world for addressing the problem. Andrew Grant’s strategy appears to be to circle the wagon’s and shut down any complaint as soon as possible, as though the act of finding fault with his company is blasphemy.

If you own a business, at some point you’re going to rub people the wrong way. It happens to the best of companies. It’s how you deal with complaints that makes all the difference. I have no way of knowing if Ramsey MacFarlane is telling the truth. He has 23 comments so far and many people have echoed his complaint. Grant has said he plans to sue MacFarlane and others in order to recoup losses. At the end of the day, Andrew Grant is impressed with social media’s power, but fails to grasp how to use it. As it stands now, Nation1 is a cautionary tale of how not to handle a situation.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.